The fall of the Assad regime within 12 days of the beginning of the rebel offensive, which came down from its stronghold in the Idlib region, is a dramatic, tectonic event, not only for Syria itself but for the entire Middle East, and to a certain extent for the global balance of power.

The Timing of the Rebel Forces’ Attack Against the Regime

It is important to emphasize that the date at which the rebels began the attack against Assad’s forces is directly related to Israel’s success in significantly reducing Hezbollah’s military strength in Lebanon and in Syria itself, eliminating a large part of the organization’s military and political leadership, and signing a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon under challenging conditions for the organization.

At the same time, Israel has damaged and reduced the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ power in Syria, which for years had been operating against Israel in collaboration with the Assad regime. Interestingly, during the Battle of Aleppo, the rebels killed a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, General Kioumars Pourhashemi.

The fall of the Assad regime directly affects Israel in the short and long term.

Positive effects

Within only a few days, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah forces, and the pro-Iranian Shiite militias (Iraqi, Afghani, Pakistani) were forced to leave Syria, or rather flee, to Iraq or Lebanon.

The collapse of the Assad regime – Iran’s main ally in the Arab world since 1980 – indicates the disintegration of the “Axis of Resistance” between Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the leading players in this axis. At this stage, this prevents the possibility of Iran using Syrian territory to attack Israel or to help Hezbollah in Lebanon to recover.

Severing the direct ground connection between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon via Syria weakens the organization militarily, economically, and politically, especially in everything related to its re-equipping with advanced weapons. The organization’s position in Lebanon has also been weakened, and it will allow other sectarian forces to act more freely and assertively to change the political reality in Lebanon, for example, by electing a new president for the Land of Cedars.

Taking advantage of the military vacuum created in Syria, Israel has carried out a two-pronged move in the past 48 hours:

– Extensive air force attacks on the significant military infrastructure of the Syrian army to disable or destroy them. The attacks focused on chemical weapons production centers, long-range missile depots, and Syrian air force bases. Airports, air defense batteries, and scientific research institutes were also attacked. The Israeli Navy destroyed a large part of the Syrian Navy’s capabilities.

– At the same time, IDF ground forces operated in the buffer zone between Israel and Syria, adopting a “front defense” approach to prevent threats to the border. According to reports, the IDF now holds control of former Syrian army positions, from the Syrian Hermon mountain to the Kuneitra region, and has taken control of 9 villages near the buffer zone.

On the regional level, Iran’s position has suffered a severe blow, and this may also affect the internal stability of the regime in Tehran.

On the global level, the fall of Assad weakens Russia and calls into question the use of Syria as a Russian naval and air base against NATO forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. This changes the global balance of power between the Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis and the Western axis led by the US.

The United States, which primarily supported Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran, for the first time firing ballistic missiles and drones against Israel, is benefiting from the fall of the Assad regime, an ally of Russia and China. The question is: What will the policy of the new Trump administration be in the face of the new challenges in the region?

Risks for Israel

This raises the question of whether the new regime in Syria and the forces that control it will be led by a fundamentalist/Islamist regime in Damascus that sees Israel as a direct enemy.

At this point, it appears that Abu Muhammad al-Julani, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara’s real name, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (“The Organization for the Liberation of the Levant” – HTS), is trying to act responsibly. The rebels have appointed Muhammad al-Bashir (the fifth prime minister of the Syrian Salvation Government in Idlib since January 2024) to form a new Syrian government, a “government of transition” that will oversee all decisions needed in Syria.

Al-Julani, who was the leader of the al-Nusra Front, which defined itself as part of al-Qaeda, went through many upheavals during the civil war, clashed with ISIS, and eventually founded the Salafi coalition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. For some time now, he has been trying to establish contact with the West and present a moderate image that he has no political interest beyond regime change in Syria.

In the meantime, he is the central figure among the rebels and is already being presented by the Syrian media as the “leader.” The future will tell where he will lead Syria.

The second coalition among the rebels from Idlib, the Syrian National Army (SNA), is made up of many factions, some secular and some Salafi. This organization mainly serves the interests of President Erdogan’s Turkey in Syria, mainly as a force that is supposed to act against the Kurdish minority in the autonomous region, ROJAVA.

For the past two days, the Syrian National Army has indeed been attacking the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF – a force that combines the moderate militias of the Free Syrian Army and the Kurds of the YPG) in the Manbij region in northern Syria.

President Erdogan has a central role in keeping the Idlib region under the rule of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and building the Syrian National Army as a proxy for Turkey. Erdogan is the one who gave the green light for the rebels to launch an attack against the Assad regime after the Syrian president refused the Turkish president’s overtures to reach reconciliation and normalize relations as long as the Turkish army controlled part of Syrian territory.

If Turkish influence in the new government allows Erdogan to maintain Turkish independent military forces in Syria, which may even go as far south as the Israeli border, this could threaten vital Israeli interests and even turn Islamist Turkey into a substitute for the threat of the Iranian Shiite axis.

It should be noted that ISIS has been very active in the eastern Syrian desert over the past year against the Syrian army, the Russian forces that assisted the Syrian military, and the Kurds in the Deir ez-Zor region. It is unclear what their status is, but it is known that they were bitter enemies of HTS.

A state of chaos and lack of central control can lead to terrorist acts by individuals or small cells across Israel’s borders. There is a danger of establishing an aggressive jihadist entity on our northern border, but that depends on developments.

Opportunities

In the opinion of the writer of these lines, the most critical opportunity for Israel is to establish an alliance of minorities. Mainly with the Druze minority in southern Syria, who, over the past year, has successfully confronted the Assad regime through active political and social activity. And also with the Kurds in the north, who managed to establish an autonomous region after repelling ISIS forces in 2014-2016.

This alliance could constitute a barrier against the possibility that Iran and the Shiites in Iraq will try to return to action in Syria to regain influence within the “new” state and assist Hezbollah.